ZALESKI: Ball State football can't take anything for granted

The Ball State football team returns a solid core group of starters on one side of the ball and hopes to build the other side into a good unit with a nucleus of young but talented players.

The expectation is that it should contend for a Mid-American Conference championship after a winning season.

But with eight returning starters on defense, including a future NFL Pro Bowl player in cornerback Blaine Bishop, the Cardinals didn't meet their goal in 1992. They managed only a 5-6 record and finished sixth in the nine-team MAC standings.

Is there something to draw from that season as Ball State readies for the 2013 season? Admittedly 1992 was a long time ago, but the experience applies.

Examining what happened when 1992 ended, the feeling was Ball State's players assumed they were positioned to take the next step. Instead, they exited the season a disappointed bunch.

Could the same thing happen to this year's team?

All summer we've read and heard from sources outside the program about how outstanding this edition of the Cardinals should be, especially on offense. Various opinions have them doing everything but discovering new life forms.

Jeremy Fowler of cbssports.com wrote that Ball State is one of 18 teams in the nation that are sneaky contenders to work their way into the Top 25 poll.

Paul Myerberg of USA TODAY calls the Cardinals a valid MAC West title threat "with the talent, experience and coaching to vault over both perceived frontrunners (Northern Illinois and Toledo) and into the MAC title game."

Another report from SB Nation rated the Cardinals as one of the most entertaining teams to watch in the country.

So you get the picture of what observers of this year's team are expecting. Players, coaches and team personnel inside the Fisher Training Complex have similar goals.

That's as it should be. This team should be confident that 2013 can be a banner season. But to assume it's a given that a 9-4 record and bowl appearance last year will translate into something more grand this year would be a huge mistake.

Ball State coach Pete Lembo says he's warned players complacency and the assumption of success could derail a football season.

The Cardinals have a little bit of a target on their back. They've been glorified by the preseason talk. Opponents tend to use that as motivation.

For a realistic sense of how a promising season can end before it even gets started, all Ball State has to do is look back at its opponent in last year's first game. Eastern Michigan came into that contest as the flavor of the month, a team ready move up in the MAC standings.

Instead, the Eagles laid a gigantic egg in Scheumann Stadium with a 37-26 loss. They clearly acted as though they were the superior team, and ultimately never recovered from that defeat. Eastern Michigan lost its first six games and finished the year with a 2-10 record. Contender in the MAC West? Hardly.

That's the warning flag Ball State should remember this year.

Let's also not forget the Cardinals earned two wins last season on the strength of incredible catches by Willie Snead late in games. His diving grab on the sideline set up a winning field goal on the game's final play to beat Indiana. He tip-toed the back corner of the end zone for a touchdown catch with a minute left to sink South Florida.

If those two games resulted in losses instead of wins, the Cardinals would have been 7-5 in the regular season, barely better than a .500 team in a low-tier conference.

The point being, the margin for winning football games is small. Ball State was 11-2 the past two years in games decided by eight points or fewer. It benefited from several fortuitous bounces and special plays. Several of those games easily could have gone the other way.

This is a program that has produced just six winning records in the past 21 seasons and has never won a bowl game in six attempts at the FBS level.

Ball State is expected to add another winning mark to its résumé this year, but with four new full-time starters on the offensive line, a defense still trying to find itself and special teams that lost two all-conference kickers, players would be ill-advised to think equaling or topping last year's 9-4 record is a mere formality.

The journey begins Thursday at home against FCS member Illinois State.